Some accept that gossip and speculation are wrong and refuse to partake.

While this stance has some merit and honour, I increasingly consider it flawed. While gossip can lead to bullying and ostracism of elements of a collective when it is allowed—as it often is—to run rampant and unfettered, it is also part and parcel of healthy discussions. How else would we form bonds and gain trust without talking about those around us—including ourselves? As for speculation, every scientific theory started as a wild idea before it matured into a testable hypothesis.

Perhaps testing is the key. Maybe we should only allow ourselves to gossip about events and actions that we would be happy to take to those involved. We can talk about people behind their backs as long as we are willing to face and confront them about it.

Otherwise, we would live in silence and fear, a vacuous context in which loud people with terrible intentions are free to take over.

My gossip over your silence

When the rules of a game change, continuing to abide by the previous framework may not be advisable, but it is certainly possible. Most of the time, the changes are incremental. Many go unnoticed for a while.

Indeed, such a recalcitrant strategy may—rarely—give us the edge. More frequently, it progressively makes us obsolete. In any case, our assessment of the state of the game will not be accurate.

When we continue to judge performance based on antiquated parameters, we may be lucky enough to make a strange breakthrough or be put out of our misery swiftly (as opposed to painful descent into the depths of mediocrity). However, the refusal—conscious or not—to see the world for what it is now can never be a reliable source of information.

Many use past reputations to continue defending something that only comforts their egos.

Obsolete egos

Positive thinking is a valid and intelligent strategy in life and business. Positive seeing is delusional regardless of the context.

When everyone must be happy about the current situation, that happiness is vacuous. When we deny or constantly delegate the possibility of criticism, we generate a fiction that has its days numbered. Inevitably, reality comes crashing down.

One shouldn’t be positive for fear of the consequences of being negative. Conversely, negativity for its own sake is pointless. Indeed, any set position wastes time in a world that shifts and swings.

Shifts and swings

When fact-checking gets in the way of freedom of expression, we may have reached a new nadir. A civilisation that cannot distinguish between fiction and non-fiction has lost the plot.

When the populace—locked out of a corrupt system of wealth— elects the richest of the rich to further concentrate their riches, we may be the blind in the land of the one-eyed. A society that doesn’t look out for its best interests is no longer fit to choose its fate.

Alas, at least the entertainment may still be riveting!

Riveting entertainment

Timers spur us into action. Take any game that allows a degree of strategy, add a time limit per turn, and the game changes.

Quicker decisions aren’t better—or worse, necessarily. They’re different decisions.

We should probably spare a thought in this direction the next time we set a deadline.

Different deadlines for different deeds

A tycoon acquires a newspaper. The newspaper stops publishing content critical of said tycoon and his practices. The editorials can no longer concern interests that may clash with those of the tycoon.

Elsewhere, another tycoon offers to more than double a far-right party’s budget. He demands the party changes its leader to one that the tycoon deems fit and agreeable.

Somehow, simultaneously, these tycoons are seen by many as heroes of free speech and social emancipation.

Martian Thoughts

My gossip over your silence

Obsolete egos

Shifts and swings

Riveting entertainment

Different deadlines for different deeds

Heroic tycoons